BEIJING: China’s courier sector reached a new milestone on Sunday as annual parcel volume surpassed 180 billion items for the first time, underscoring the robust growth of the country’s postal and express delivery industry and the strong momentum of its economy, according to the State Post Bureau.
Real-time monitoring by the bureau showed the 180 billion mark was reached after an online order for a smart learning device was placed by a resident in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The parcel, destined for Li Xiaojun, was processed at a fully automated warehouse belonging to e-commerce platform JD.com before being transported by an unmanned delivery vehicle and handed over for final doorstep delivery — a vivid example of the increasingly automated logistics chain common in China’s major cities.
At JD’s Pingshan grid warehouse station in Shenzhen, unmanned vehicles have become part of routine operations. “We handle about 15,000 parcels a day. With five unmanned vehicles, our daily dispatch capacity exceeds 1,000 orders,” said An Jixing, head of the station. “They reduce the number of back-and-forth trips for staff, ease their workload and allow them to stay longer in communities to serve customers. The improvement in customer experience is clear.” As the recipient of the milestone parcel, Li said he was surprised to learn his order marked the national record. “I placed the order last night and received it today. It’s a learning device for my child — he’ll be thrilled,” he said.
“My wife shops online a lot, and my factory also rely on courier services. Everything has become much faster and more precise. I didn’t realize parcel volumes were this enormous every year.” The courier who delivered the record-setting package, Zhang Fan, said the rise of automation has changed his work for the better. Serving more than 2,000 house-holds in a Shenzhen neighborhood, he said unmanned vehicles have significantly improved efficiency.
“Before, I had to travel nearly 6 kilometers one way just to pick up packages four times a day,” he said. “Now unmanned vehicles bring parcels to a transfer point just a few hundred meters from the community. I can focus more on deliveries and spend more time talking with customers and collecting parcels.”
The record-setting parcel highlights the industry’s deep integration of technology with production. In warehouses, robots now handle shelving, picking and outbound operations. In sorting centers, artificial intelligence-powered vision systems scan parcels within milliseconds, reducing error rates. In transport, industry-specific large models help optimize routing. For pickup and delivery operations, drones, unmanned vehicles and robots are being deployed in more pilot scenarios to reduce costs.
China now processes an average of more than 16 billion parcels per month, with peak single-day volume reaching 777 million — more than 6,200 parcels every second. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
